"Wake Island." At the Plaza.
THE CINEMA
Wake Island. A patch of sand just breaking the otherwise empty surface of a great tract of the Pacific Ocean, an island without a trace of natural defences, a ridiculous American sand-castle manned by a dozen planes, a handful of medium-calibre guns, and four hundred men—too many to find decent burying-space when fourteen days' defiance of a whole Japanese invasion fleet was over. The major disasters which followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour overshadowed the heroic stOry of Wake Island's militarily hopeless defence, and now Hollywood has made a film designed to give honour where honour was perhaps overdue. It begins well. Here is the island, here are the guns, the planes, the men. We see how remote and alone they are, how comparatively helpless against the menace which soon will creep up over the empty circle of the horizon. We are ready to experience a piece of history which, even if it were presented in the bald jargon of a military text-book, could not fail to exceed in its dramatic effect the wildest imaginings of Paramount's most expensive team of scenario-writers. We sit wait- ing. And then, shuffling sentimentally on the sands of Wake Island in circumstances completely hackneyed for anyone who has seen more than one of the spate of comedies about the U.S. Forces, we find Robert Preston and William Bendix. Surviving this shock, we are less surprised to find that the Marines are commanded by Brian Donlevy, and to see him surrounded by many another familiar face. But when we discover that with the familiar faces go well- worn celluloid gestures and every pathetic trick that Hollywood has ever used to win sympathy for a lay-figure, then we know that this film, in spite of its title has nothing whatever to do with the epic gesture of four hundred doomed men in December, 1941.
In this week's newsreels there is a single shot which contrives in a matter of seconds to show clearly what is lacking from Wake Island. It appears in an episode photographed by American camera- men on board an aircraft-carrier in the Pacific. In the most sensa- tional actuality material of the war we see a bomb explode on the deck of the carrier, right in front of the camera, and an unsecured plane bounce and lurch over the side after a near-miss ; but amongst these moments of real war there is one particularly revealing instant when a sailor starts to run the length of the deck to help tackle a fire in the stern. Suddenly he stops, looks apprehensively up, does a strange little dance of indecision, and returns hurriedly to cover in time to escape a machine-gunning Japanese plane—all this completely free from theatrical heroism, with foolhardiness struggling against fear and good sense coming finally to the rescue.
EDGAR AsTEY.
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